


Case One: Alley Cat

by shadedScribe



Series: Cases From The Weird Files [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1930s, Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society (Homestuck), Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Gen, I made up a Zahhak because Horuss didn't fit, I think that covers the main points of this AU, Some real Alternate History fun in up in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22841749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadedScribe/pseuds/shadedScribe
Summary: There's a member of the Zahhak family who might be up to some indiscretions, and New York's most interesting Private Eyes are on the case.
Relationships: Nepeta Leijon & Equius Zahhak
Series: Cases From The Weird Files [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646455
Kudos: 15





	Case One: Alley Cat

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! IRL kicked my ass and I couldn't get any inspiration on my main projects, so I wrote this in two days instead. What the hell, it's only a hobby. Also, I think this might be the best AU I've ever conceived.

On an Earth both very familiar and very different, where two different intelligent species arose to claim ownership, monsters were real, and magic ran a whole lot closer to the surface, in the city of New York, stood a small private detective agency, that of M. Peixes, A. Serket, and P. Maryam. Like all of the best and worst of such agencies, it was a ramshackle, highly unprofessional sort of place, sought out only by those who had been directed to it by word of mouth or those truly desperate. It had a dingy, hazy office with a much-worn coffeemaker and the occupants’ names etched in black on the frosted-glass door. This particular agency, however, had a special wrinkle in its reputation, for those in the know: its detectives were particularly good at dealing with the things that went bump in the night (to put it delicately).

Meenah Peixes, one of said detectives, was just coming back to the office with bagels and smoked salmon(well, mostly just the salmon, to be honest), and in a foul mood. The Port Authority had paid them fairly well for for dealing with the dreaded That Thing With The Razory Tentacles That Wasn’t Even In Any Of Aranea’s Reference Books But Still Died From Being Set On Fire And Tridented In The Face A Bunch, but that money was running out, and they hadn’t had a good case in a while. Not to mention it was almost Downfall Day, which stirred all sorts of contradictory emotions in most trolls to start with, and tended towards yelling and riots and all of the most unpleasant sorts of political rallies, troll and human alike. Not to mention that Meenah got a lot of extra attention around the whole thing, just because she was descended from the Condesce. She had died two hundred years ago, codclammit. You’d think people would have gotten over it by now, but _nooo_.

There had been a human on the street corner standing on a soap box taking the opportunity to harangue passers-by about the need to organize and protect themselves from trolls. Meenah had been tempted to throw a mailbox at him, but that would have just gone to prove his point, and seeing as his audience had consisted of only a handful of people who mostly looked more bored than anything, it wouldn’t have been worth it. Still, it was irritating. But hey, it could be worse; she could be Aranea, whose ancestor’s name was never spoken by an Irishman on any day of the year without a curse attached to it. Meenah had tried to get her to pick a new last name on several occasions to help the business, but Aranea had talked her ear off about the importance of identity and crap until she had fallen asleep, and that had been the end of that.

Meenah sat down at her desk, ate her lunch, and stared at the ceiling, spinning in her chair and fighting boredom. Aranea was at the library, combing through spellbooks; Porrim was off doing some political shit or whatever, and Meenah was bored. Bored bored bored. She alternated between staring at the door and staring at the telephone. Stupid telephone never even rang. Oh, we’ve got to get a telephone, Meenah, it’s becoming an important part of the communications network, Meenah, honestly, Meenah, it’s 1931, get with the times already. Stupid telephone. Waste of money.

After an obnoxious period of waiting, Meenah was finally shaken out of her bored reverie by a firm knock at the door. She hastily sat up, brushed some crumbs off of her fins, and raised her voice.

“Come on in.”

The door opened and Caball Zahhak stepped in. The Zahhaks were bluebloods in both the troll and human senses of the word. After the Executor’s infamous failure to execute, he and his clan had wandered the distant parts of the world, before tagging along on some of the first European expeditions to the New World, where distance and the ever-determined resistance of the Pacific peoples kept the Condesce’s empire at bay. There was a Zahhak’s signature on the Declaration of Independence, and their family was as entrenched as any that had been prominent in those days, and well respected, even if people made off-color quips about horses behind their backs. It was honestly a little surprising to see Caball, the current patriarch, coming down here for her business, but hey, apparently their agency’s reputation was a little better than she had thought.

“So, what can I do for you, Mr. Zahhak?” Meenah asked.

“I have a certain… problem that needs investigating.” he said. “One of my family’s younger nephews, Equius, has been acting oddly as of late.”

“Odd how?”

“He has been missing important social engagements and classes sometimes, and sneaking out at night, which is very unlike him. He makes bad excuses about it when questioned. I’ve observed him, and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with alcohol or something else similarly unsavory. Perhaps a quadrant? In any case, it needs looking into, and we can hardly be seen trying to follow him around ourselves. Your agency has a certain reputation for discretion.” He handed her a photograph of Equius.

“Yeah, yeah, I gotcha. We’re on the case.” said Meenah. “Our hourly rate is-”

“Just take it up with my accountant.” Caball cut her off. “Telephone me when you have something worth reporting.” He turned and strode briskly out the door to a waiting motorcar.

Poncy prick. In Alternia he would have had to bow and scrape just to speak to her. But this was America, and Alternia was two hundred years dead. No sense in dwelling on it. Meenah got up from her desk and went to assemble her colleagues.

\-----------------

She caught up with Porrim outside some meeting house, waving goodbye to the mixed crowd of humans and trolls she had been leaving with. Porrim spotted her and started keeping pace as the two of them made their way towards the library.

“Hello, Meenah. I assume that we have a case?” Porrim asked.

“Yeah, we do. Caball Zahhak swung by-”

Porrim made a face like she had just bitten into a spoiled tomato.

“Must we?” she asked.

“You got a problem with him?” Meenah asked.

“Meenah, I know that you never follow politics unless it looks like there’s going to be a war somewhere, but Caball Zahhak is really a very unpleasant man. That immigration bill he’s sponsoring in the Senate right now is particularly awful.”

“Yeah, but this is just some quick and easy sleuthing about some squirt in his family who’s got a side girl or some other stupid thing, not anything political. Besides, it’s not like you’re doing anything to stop him by _not_ taking his money.”

“I guess…” Porrim still looked doubtful.

“Aw, come on. We’ll bill him extra.”

“Very well, then. I suppose that there is little point in refusing. Don’t ask me to meet with him though.”

“Wasn’t gonna.”

The two of them finally reached the library, and made their way into the magical section, passing the silly looking dilettantes whose outfits screamed ‘witch’ or ‘mage’, and the people in sensible clothes who were all much more dangerous casters than any of them. The most dangerous caster of all of them(probably, anyways, you never knew) was awaiting them in a nice blue dress and white-rimmed glasses. 

Aranea looked up from where she was copying some writing out of a very big and old leather-bound tome into a notebook in prim blue copperplate.

“Oh. Hello. I take it that someone has employed our professional services, then?” she said.

“Yep.” 

Meenah looked over her shoulder to see what she was working on. ‘A Method for causing an untimely Death over a Distance, whilst maintaining the Appearance of a Natural passing.’ said the heading of the page she was copying.

“Trying to get your inheritance a little early, huh?” Meenah said.

“Honestly,” said Aranea, “that’s very uncalled for. Many casters who are researching long-range spells study the spells created for death at a distance in a state of perfect innocence, simply because the topic has been historically very popular and has thus accrued a great deal of practical research. I don’t understand why you persist in suspecting me of ill intent for engaging in a common research practice.”

“Because only three elderly relatives stand between you and being the Marquess of Penzance?” Porrim suggested.

“Firstly, it would be Marchioness, unless I used my ancestor’s style and called myself a Marquise, and secondly, am I to be restricted from fully studying my art merely because I happen to have a few ailing relatives? That hardly seems fair.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Meenah cut her off. “Now come on, we have to go figure out what embarassing indiscretions Caball Zahhak’s nephew is getting up to.”

“Oh, how fun.” Aranea gathered her things, and they left.

\----------------

A few hours later, as the sun dipped below the horizon, the three of them were hanging out outside of the Zahhak mansion on the Upper East Side. Aranea had helpfully enspelled them to be harder to notice, and they were waiting for Equius Zahhak to come out so they could follow him.

“I still don’t entirely like this.” Porrim muttered.

“Come on, Porrim, he’s a rich kid, it’s not like anything acshoally bad is gonna happen to him.” Meenah pointed out.

“I wish I could be sure of that.”

“Quiet, both of you.” said Aranea. “Here he comes.”

Equius slipped out of a side door, with a big coat on and carrying what sort of looked like a picnic basket. Interesting. He made his way carefully across the grounds to the street, then started off, with the three of them unobtrusively following. They crossed a few blocks, with Equius stopping to look behind him every so often. Between Aranea’s spell and their own sneakiness, he didn’t notice them. A bit more furtive walking later, and they had come to Central Park. Equius made his way into a little stand of trees, then stood and waited for a moment. A rather nice looking black cat slunk out of the shadows and made its way up to him. Meenah gaped at it.

“Did we seriously follow him all the way out here over a glubbin’ ca-”

There was the weird sort of twinging pulse in the air that came with shapeshifting, and the cat was suddenly an oliveblood girl who sprang up to catch Equius in a big hug.

“Equius!”

“Good evening, Nepeta. How are you?”

“Feeling purrety good.”

Ugh. Cat puns. (As opposed to Meenah’s fish puns, which were of course the mark of a witty and refined speaker.)

Equius spread out what had apparently actually just been a picnic, and the two of them started talking. Nepeta went on about the people she interacted with in her daily life and the various complaints and problems she was having with them, while Equius gave advice, which admittedly mostly consisted of judging various people to be morally suspect, though considering the kind of company Nepeta apparently kept it wasn’t the worst judgement, and she at least seemed to find it kind of funny. She was certainly smiling wider after the conversation than she had been before it. After a little while of that, there was a pause.

“So?” asked Nepeta.

“So what?” said Equius.

“How’s it going with your uncle?”

Equius sighed heavily. “He is determined to push the match forward. I have exhausted all avenues for dissuading him.”

“Did you threaten to go to the press?”

“Yes, but he only pointed out that he has a great deal of control over what is printed and what is considered credible.”

Nepeta snarled a little with discontent.

“That’s not fair! He can’t force you into a quadrant like that just because it’s useful fur politics.”

“If only it were so. At this point, I see little else I can do unless I simply run away, and Caball will hold a grudge, and do everything in his power to force the bond.”

Nepeta looked at him with concern.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going to run anyway. Head to the Midwest.” Equius hesitated. “I’m not going to ask you to come with me.”

“What kind of moirail would I be if you had to ask?” Nepeta exclaimed.

Equius sagged with relief.

“Thank you. Trying to extricate myself from this family has been… difficult. I can’t imagine what it would be like without you.”

“Shoosh.” Nepeta reached over and hugged him real close. Shit, that was paler than a bleached Norwegian.

The three P.I.s waited behind the bushes a little while longer while the two of them made plans to skip town, then said their goodbyes, Equius heading back to the Zahhak house while Nepeta slunk away through the trees in cat form.

“Well, I guess that explains it.” said Meenah, when the three of them were alone again. “Disappointingly boring, really. Though I’m surprised that lycanthrope girl isn’t in a coralantine somewhere.”

“When someone turns into a cat, they’re an ailuranthrope, actually.” said Aranea. “Also, ‘coralantine’? Really?”

“What? Too much?”

“The city’s quarantining procedures for the various were-creatures are as lax and underfunded as the rest of its health measures.” Porrim pointed out. “Though at least in this case, their incompetence works in favor of keeping people free of unnecessary imprisonment.”

“Yeah, sure.” said Meenah. “Either of you know what Equius was talking about with a match or whatever?”

“It’s been in the gossip rags lately, actually.” said Porrim. “One of those formal moirail bonds, arranged between someone from the Zahhak family and a member of some rich troll merchant family from England. I should have made the connection sooner.”

That made some sense. Trolls and humans had adopted each other’s romantic customs to a degree as they intermingled; despite the best efforts of some of the subsequent rulers, it was still perfectly natural for humans in the lands of the former Alternian empire to have matesprits, kismesises, moirails, and auspistices. Likewise, trolls in mostly-human lands had sometimes adopted the local marriage customs, or, as the Zahhaks were apparently in the habit of, tying the quadrants into them, performing human-style marriage ceremonies for each one. And of course, all bets were off when it came to interspecies relationships.

“So they’re pressuring him into a pale marriage that he’s not into while he’s already got a secret morayail, then?” Meenah mused.

“It appears to be that way, yes.”

“I suppose that someone in Caball Zahhak’s position can exert a lot of pressure, even if it is a free country.” Aranea said.

“Free-ish.” muttered Porrim.

“Well, that wraps things up then.” said Meenah. “I’m gonna go call Zahhak. See you guys around.”

“You aren’t actually going to rat the poor kids out, are you?” Porrim demanded, incredulous.

“They’re only a few years younger than us at most.” Aranea pointed out, before Porrim silenced her with a sidelong glare.

“Oh, come on, Porrim, the Zahhak kid’s gonna get locked in the house for a bit before going off to pale marry some English troll and stay filthy rich, and the girl’s gonna be sad for a bit before going on with her life and being occasionally wistful about the relationship that probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Porrim said.

“Well, I am.” said Meenah.

“Go ahead, then.” Porrim said. “I’ll just have to keep an eye out.”

An eye out for what? Nevermind, she’d deal with it tomorrow. She had a call to make.

\-------------------

Meenah was in a much better mood as she brought a late dinner back to the office the next day.  
Caball had clearly been pretty unhappy about her revelations, but he could hardly blame her for it, and he had directed her to his accountant’s office without complaint. Said accountant hadn’t even blinked when Meenah had charged him double, and she was always happier when she had money.

Downfall Day was still approaching, but today it had produced something a little more cheerful. A group of serious-looking trolls had furtively approached her, confirmed that she was descended from the Condesce, and offered to have her shipped with their little political club out to the Indian Ocean to be coronated as Empress and lead some ramshackle dissident groups on an attempt to reconquer Ceylon and start a second Alternian Empire. She had declined, of course, on account of how it would have been suicidal, but it was good for her self-esteem. She started talking about it to Aranea, who was sitting in the corner sketching out single-use corpse preservation talismans, as soon as she got in.

“-and while I like the deference and all, you’d think they would have a more realistic view of the world. I mean, it’s been two hundred years! They don’t seriously think they can dislodge Ceylon from the limeys, do they?”

“One hundred ninety-one.” said Aranea.

“Huh?”

“The Sino-Russo-Anglo-Ottoman-Sufferite alliance defeated Her Imperious Condescension at the Battle of Chabahar on April 13, 1740, one hundred ninety-one years ago, less a few days.” Aranea explained.

“Ugggghh. ‘Rosa’s tears, why do you always have to be so pacific?” Meenah groaned.

“I don’t care if some people mix the two words up a lot, that pun didn’t even start with the same letter.” said Aranea, mildly offended.

“Pedatlantic.”

“That’s better.”

Their witty repartee was interrupted by Porrim, who threw open the door with a crash and pulled her sword out of the umbrella stand.

“Well, I hope you’re happy with yourself.” she snapped at Meenah.

“Why, what happened?” Meenah asked.

“A small hit squad just left a meeting with Caball Zahhak’s butler and is heading towards Central Park.”

“Oh,” said Meenah, hiding her surprise. “That’s gotta be a coincidence.”

“With _silver_ weapons.”

“Aw fuck.” 

“He would go that far?” Aranea asked.

“Why not?” Porrim’s voice dropped into a sarcastic register. “After all, she’s only some vagabond werecat. Good-for-nothing layabout. And you know they’re all violent types anyhow. Serves her right for being out of quarantine. Honestly, whoever did it was doing us a favor, offing her before she could bite anyone.”

“Alright, alright, I get it.” said Meenah.

“We’re responsible for this whole situation.” Porrim said.

“Well, technically, Caball is-” Aranea started.

“Are you two going to help me make this right or not?” Porrim nearly shouted.

Meenah was no saint, but she couldn’t help but feel a little wrong at helping do some rich jackass’s dirty work for him.

‘Yeah. Yeah, we’re coming.”

Meenah reached up and pulled her trident off the wall, and the three of them set off.

\----------------

A few hours of wandering around Central Park later, trying to find Nepeta before the others did, Aranea finally got the idea to borrow someone’s dog and use a spell she knew that enchanted it to sniff out werecats. A brief dognapping and chase later, and they found Nepeta, hiding in the boughs of a maple tree in cat form. Unfortunately, the other searchers were there too, though they hadn’t spotted her yet. There was no way to get Nepeta out of there without drawing attention to themselves, so it was going to be a fight. On the bright side, they were in a secluded part of the park, and the weather looked like it would turn stormy soon, so there were very few people out. Another bright side: the six hired ruffians were all carrying lanterns, in deference to the fact that only two of them were trolls, which made them rather easy to see. No sense delaying things, then. Meenah signaled Aranea to start them off. She pondered for a moment before selecting a spell and making a looping hand gesture.

A little ways away, the flame in each enemy’s lantern leapt out of the glass and alighted in it’s bearer’s hair. As they yelled and struggled to put out the flames, Meenah and Porrim closed the gap and rushed the foes. Meenah went for a big human man, who bore down on her with a silver-edged axe, clearly expecting to overpower her. Her parry knocked him back a full five feet, and her trident cut him down. Porrim had cut up one of the trolls in the meantime as well.

One of the humans turned out to be a witch; he cast a spell that tried to pull all the air away from Meenah and Porrim’s heads. Aranea intercepted it and perverted its intent; the unfortunate fellow wound up pulling all of the air in a wide radius into his mouth at a very high speed, which apparently did something awful to his lungs by the way he spasmed and fell. Luckily, the weather meant that the noise of the thunder was unremarkable.

Human number three was too disoriented from the fire and thunder to aim her gun properly before Meenah’s trident ragdolled her into a tree; not that an unjacketed silver bullet would have done much against a seadweller anyway. Human number four had a regular old sledgehammer, which broke in half at the shaft as he raised it thanks to one of Aranea’s hexes, and Meenah cut him down too. The last enemy, a lanky troll with a sword, was skilled enough to dodge the first rush of Porrim’s rainbow drinker speed, and brought his blade around to parry her blow. Unfortunately, he was equipped to hunt a shifter, and his silver was no match for Porrim’s enchanted Damascus steel; his blade parted like butter and he went down in a spray of teal blood. Some of it got on Porrim’s face; she licked it off with relish.

And that was that. It was nice to affirm that the three of them were still badasses.

Nepeta slunk cautiously down the tree she had been hiding in, still in cat form.

“Good evening, Miss Nepeta.” said Porrim.

The werecat was so startled she fell over and shifted back into human.

“How did- who are you?” she asked.

“It’s a bit of a long story.” Porrim said, glancing back at Meenah. “But we were accidentally somewhat responsible for the fact that you were being hunted, and decided we ought to rectify it.”

“Oh.” Nepeta glanced around at the bodies. “Thanks.”

“If you were looking to abscond with your moirail, now might be a good time.” said Aranea.

“I guess so, huh.” Nepeta shook her head. “I can’t believe his uncle actually tried to have me killed.”

“Nothing is beneath the privileged when they are irritated.” Porrim said. “Would you like an escort when you break your moirail out?”

“No thanks,” said Nepeta. “I think I’ll manage. Do you think I should-”

At this Meenah spotted something much more interesting among the bodies and went to take a look at it, ignoring the conversation. By the time she was finished, Nepeta was shifting back into cat form and racing off towards the Zahhak mansion.

“Good luck!” Porrim called as she went.

The three of them watched her go in silence for a moment, before Porrim turned to Meenah.

“Thank you for helping me make things right.” she said.

“Aw, don’t mention it.” Meenah said cheerfully. “After all, virtue is its own reward and all, am I right?”

There was another moment’s companionable silence.

“You just stole all of those dead guys’ wallets, didn’t you?” said Aranea.

“Shell yeah.”

“You’re incorrigible.” Porrim shook her head.

“Hey, we already murdered them, so there’s no point in having scruples about robbing them.”

“I suppose.” Porrim sighed. “Still, I wish this could have been worked out a little more smoothly.”

Meenah got what she meant. Doing Caball Zahhak’s work, in hindsight, made her feel a little dirty deep inside, and not in a fun way. And Porrim had been hesitant about it from the start. 

“Tell you what.” said Meenah. “From now on, as far as is practical, I’m gonna screen our clients so we don’t do shit like this.”

“Thank you, Meenah. That makes me feel a lot better.” Porrim beamed at her with both her smile and her rainbow drinker glow.

“We do still have to deal with those bodies though.” Meenah frowned.

“I thought that might come up, and came prepared.” said Aranea.

She pulled a big hunk of old cheese out of her bag, crumbled it, and tossed it over the corpses while muttering something in Latin under her breath. Moments later, a swarm of rats boiled up and started dragging the bodies away.

“It’s a spell for calling up all of the nearby rats to devour something.” Aranea explained unnecessarily. “It works exceptionally well in New York.”

“Hey, as long as it saves a cleanup.” said Meenah, as the bodies vanished.

“Quite.” Aranea nodded. “Now help me gather up those weapons; I know a spell to melt them down for the silver.”

They collected their loot, and rushed back to the office just ahead of the rain.

\---------------

The next day dawned bright and clear after the rain, and Meenah was in a good mood. There had been an anti-troll speaker with an exceptionally annoying voice on the street corner; Meenah had ‘accidentally’ kicked the crate out from under him as she passed and had gotten cheers. The silver they had salvaged had wound up being worth a pretty penny, and Meenah snagged a newspaper before she got back to the office. Said office was empty again; Porrim and Aranea were out politicking and librarying, respectively. Meenah sat in her desk chair, and flipped through the paper. 

There was a story about the Zahhak family, specifically about the sudden disappearance of one Equius Zahhak, and how it made a planned match with an influential English merchant family fall though. Caball was reportedly furious. Meenah grinned.

Unfortunately, that was about the extent of the interesting news in the paper. No wars or anything- wait, what was that? Another maritime incident between Australia and Aotearoa? It probably wouldn’t lead to a war, but hey, you never knew. 

Meenah settled down to read, and waited for the next case to come through her door.

**Author's Note:**

> Uno card: Write a fic without a fight scene or draw 25  
> Me, holding the entire deck: And what of it?
> 
> Also, Caball's name is, in the grand tradition of Homestuck, a dumb multi-layered pun. It's a play on the word 'cabal', and also on Equus ferus caballus, AKA the domestic horse. Feel free to needle me for worldbuilding details in the comments if you're curious.


End file.
